During renovation and/or redesigning of bathrooms it is many times desired to replace also the bath tub or rather the shower tub because the old tub is worn or because a new color or shape for the tub is desired.
It is known from the state of the art to remove the old tub in one piece thus at least partly destroying the wall and apron areas with their tiles.
In order to prevent that the tilework of the bathroom suffers excessively, it has been suggested to saw the old tub into transportable pieces in order to be able to remove these pieces without any greater damages to the remaining installations in a room. A method is known from German Patent No. 26 56 434, in which the old bath tub after removal of the mortar fixing the edge of the tub is cut up and is removed from the casing which remains standing. This method is very time-consuming and requires the greatest care since during the mechanical operation of loosening the edge of the tub from its mortar connection in the tiled areas the danger of destroying the tiles exists. The mortar fixing the tub edge must be removed according to the teaching of this patent prior to cutting up the tub because the cutting methods known according to the state of the art, like the metal compass saw or angle sander, produce such vibrations that without previous loosening of the tub the danger of tiles breaking out exists. Furthermore it has proven to be disadvantageous since cutting up the old tub into several pieces requires additional time. It is expensive and creates a considerable amount of dirt. Particularly the latter is very unfortunate when replacing a tub in a lived-in residence. Furthermore the cutting operations, which are done for example by compass saws or separating grinding disks, lead to a considerable noise development.
German OS No. 33 11 125 describes a method for installing tubs, in which method the old tub is cut up such that the edge remains, namely remains connected to the base. The new tub is according to this method placed onto the edge of the old tub and is connected to same after the center portion of the old tub has been removed. It is disadvantageous in this method that the new tub must have wider edges than the old tub so that the new tub has smaller inside dimensions than the old tub.
All up to now existing separating operations on old tubs are carried out by means of separating disks (for example by a one-hand angle sander) or saws (for example a compass saw). These are mechanical separating operations causing vibrations, noises and physical stress. Vibrations harbor the danger of damage to tile and mortar areas, noises bother the installer and others in the house, and the physical stress due to exertion during the guiding, dust development, enamel parts coming off, chips from the tub and the separating tool (for example separating disks and saw blades) additionally influence the installer.
Attention must be paid during such cutting operations that the tilework of the bathroom does not suffer and that in particular when the edge of the old bath tub is supposed to be kept as support for the new tub the wall or cement stabilization is not damaged.
It is common in known cutting methods to guide the cutting device manually along the respective cutting edge. This has furthermore the disadvantage that an optimum cutting speed cannot be achieved since the operator on the one hand can determine only according to feeling the advancing speed of the cutting device and on the other hand in particular in the case of cast-iron tubs, the thickness of which can be up to 16 mm, he cannot precisely guide the cutting device during the long cutting time so that without lateral deviations the shortest possible cutting line is produced. The lateral deviations result in an unintended widening of the cutting gap and thus in a considerable increase of the time needed. A further disadvantage of the manual guiding of a cutting device is that it is often not possible to produce precise cutting edges since the operator, in particular in the case of a longitudinal cut on a tub, must many times change his position and must reset the cutting device.
The basic purpose of the invention is to produce a method and a device of the above-mentioned type, which do not have a significant influence in view of the dust and noise development during the replacement of tubs, and which on the other hand with a simple design enable an optimization of the cutting operation, in particular a shortening of the cutting time and a precisioning of the separating line.